Lament of Innocence
by Psychoblue
Summary: A Shadaloo base in the South Pole becomes a doorway to a terrible nightmare as the myth of Q visits the base and becomes an unspeakable terror. Q/Unknown oneshot.


Once again, Moshe reached for the doorknob, and once again he hesitated. Every time he would resolve to wrap his hand around the knob, he would detect that wave of murderous intent emanating from the other side of the room, which made him wonder if there was death awaiting him once the door was opened. As a former mercenary and current Shadaloo operative, Moshe was no stranger to being ambushed by enemy contingents, but he always trusted his employers to have good enough judgment to ally with people that wouldn't stab them in the back on a whim.

Even though he currently worked under the globally-despised warlord known only as "Bison," who insisted that everyone who approached him refer to him as "Master Bison" in anticipation of his inevitable conquest of the world, Moshe didn't think he would need to subjugate the man who was supposed to be Shadaloo's honored guest who would bring them into a new age of prosperity. Ever since the arrival of the mysterious Pandora box, the stories about their guest's fighting ability became less like an accurate account and more like some kind of twisted ghost story, ripe with tales of resurrection, betrayal, and revenge stemming almost from birth. Moshe wouldn't have believed it if Bison didn't vouch for the guest's claims with tangible evidence.

"The door is open," a quiet, deep voice said from the other side of the door, telling Moshe that whatever awaited him was aware of his presence. Keeping his right hand tucked behind his back so that he could reach the spare pistol that he kept hidden from plain sight within a small opening in his blue Shadaloo uniform, Moshe turned the doorknob and carefully opened the door, expecting his guest's private guard on the other side with their guns aimed for his head. Instead, Moshe saw was a lone Japanese man, dressed in a white suit with his dark hair slicked back into a singular point, sitting quietly at his desk watching something on his computer monitor.

As Shadaloo's honored guest turned to face Moshe, he revealed a peculiarity with his right eye: it was a brilliant shade of red, much like the eyes of Bison's sworn enemy Akuma. Bison had theorized that there was a relationship between Akuma's Satsui no Hadou and the mysterious power that their guest wielded, but he gave no orders to Moshe to investigate the similarities. Instead, all Moshe had to do was make sure that Kazuya Mishima and his arrogant smirk would safely receive the gift that Shadaloo prepared for his G-Corporation that was at war with their mutual enemy, the Mishima Zaibatsu.

_Not that we really need an alliance with G-Corporation now that we've neutralized the Zaibatsu's leader, _Moshe mused to himself as he put both his hands behind his back, letting go of his hidden pistol now that he was sure that they were alone. _Currently the Zaibatsu is under the leadership of Jin's underlings Gordo and Williams. Without their true leader, we could probably overtake them in less than two days: the only reason they still exist right now is because Lord Bison wants to toy with them...like a child pulling apart a bug's wings. _

"Sit down, lieutenant," Kazuya motioned to the chair in front of his desk.

"Yes, sir," Moshe nodded his head slightly before obeying his guest's request. Bison gave strict orders to obey Kazuya as loyally as Moshe obeyed him, and Moshe wasn't anywhere close to ready to defy a direct order.

Noticing that Moshe wasn't making himself comfortable, Kazuya's smirk widened into a wicked grin before turning his monitor towards the Shadaloo soldier so that he could see what he looking at. Moshe expected Kazuya to be watching something along the lines of children being tortured, or women being ravaged: something terrible that would go in line with Kazuya's reputation as a heartless monster. Instead, Kazuya was watching something considerably less revolting: footage of a teenager with a hairstyle similar to Kazuya's own, with the exception of the thick bangs hanging down from his face. The youth was wearing the dark blue school uniform of the Mishima Polytechnic School that Shadaloo once tried to encroach upon, talking to several other students with a shy smile on his face.

"Do you recognize this boy, lieutenant?"

"Jin Kazama, the leader of the Zaibatsu," Moshe replied without breaking protocol of showing the utmost respect to his superiors. "This video was obviously taken several years ago when he was still a ward of Heihachi Mishima, Shadaloo's former ally."

"It was a simpler time back then," Kazuya mused as he leaned over to watch the video stream once again. "Before Jin became the leader of the Zaibatsu, he was of no threat to me: it wasn't until he started cultivating the Devil Gene that I started paying him any kind of real attention. There were times, I admit, where I considered approaching him, telling him the truth about why I was never there when he was growing up...but business came first. Business always comes first, doesn't it, lieutenant?"

"We all have duties we must perform, sir," Moshe replied honestly as he fought the urge to gag at Kazuya's obviously false chivalry. The Mishima blood feud might have been something that Shadaloo only recently began studying, when their world merged with the Mishima's world, but Moshe did plenty of research before traveling to the Antarctic base of G-Corporation with the rest of the Shadaloo caravan. The Mishima feud in the modern era began when Heihachi Mishima threw his son Kazuya into a ravine, believing that Kazuya could climb back up, he would be worthy of inheriting the Zaibatsu. Rather than create a worthy successor, Heihachi instead created a demon cloaked in the body of the man, with Kazuya taking his place as the Zaibatsu head at the conclusion of the first King of Iron Fist tournament and then plunging the world into chaos.

The blood feud had now spanned three generations, with the once-peaceful Jin Kazama becoming as ruthless as his father and grandfather and taking control of the Mishima Zaibatsu up until Heihachi and Kazuya allied themselves with Shadaloo and used their combine resources to bring him down. Even though Heihachi had since broken away from Shadaloo to take control of the Zaibatsu after a dispute over Bison's methods, it didn't change the fact that grandfather and father had teamed to put an end to a son that could have lived a fulfilling life if not for the blood feud. When Moshe asked Heihachi what the feud was over, Heihachi merely replied that it had gone on for so long that he no longer felt any malice towards Kazuya and Jin. They were in the way, and needed to be dealt with: that was the justification of who was supposed to be the most sensible of the Mishima clan.

Chilling stuff, to be sure, and thinking about it made Moshe's pistol all the most tempting to use.

"Why are you watching this, sir?" Moshe finally asked as he remembered the brutal battle he witnessed at Jin's defeat, where he and Heihachi stood watch while Kazuya and Bison picked apart Jin in what could only be described as an extremely unfair fight. Even though Kazuya was Jin's father, he did things to Jin that day that no father should ever dream of doing. Why would he be watching clips of Jin's innocence if not to laugh at how naive his son could really be?

Kazuya's smirk faded and his expression hardened as he answered Moshe's question. "I like to consider myself an expert at revenge, lieutenant. Many years ago, I experienced my first taste of fulfilled vengeance when I tossed Heihachi off of the same ravine he tossed me from, and since then I've made revenge my life's work. Everything I do is in the name of vengeance...but this is the first time I have been able to look at revenge in hindsight. With Heihachi, I had a justifiable reason to hate him...but my son, the extent of my hatred for him goes no further than that he had something that I needed, and he refused to give it to me."

"...far too late to show remorse when he's dead by your hand," Moshe growled as his hands trembled. It's no wonder Bison wished to ally with this man: Kazuya was every bit as heartless and cruel as him. There wasn't a day that went by where Moshe wished he could just take his wife Illyana and walk away from Shadaloo with a bullet in Bison's head, but Moshe stayed loyal to Shadaloo due to the massive debt he owed them. But Kazuya...Bison would no doubt be upset if Moshe attacked Kazuya, but any kind of punishment he'd receive would be more than worth the satisfaction he'd get from ridding the world of a devil like Kazuya Mishima.

A sinister chuckle rumbled from Kazuya's throat as he watched Moshe tremble with rage. "...that's right. Bison told me that you still cling to your morals, which is why he'd made you his aide. You're the conscience that Bison doesn't have," the Cold-blooded prince said while he reached for his red silver-studded combat gloves sitting on his desk. Pulling them over his hands, Kazuya rested his chin on his wrists and pressed further. "Bison also told me that you hate him with every fiber of your being, and he cannot wait for the day you finally snap and make your move. I'm sure it bothers you how he parades your wife around as his personal weapon...and I've also heard rumors. When she is resting in her recharging station, it is said that Bison allows that preening ninja of his to come into the room and-"

"That's enough...sir," Moshe growled as he fought the urge to reach for his hidden pistol and put a bullet in Kazuya's brain. The tales of Kazuya's fighting prowess were on par with the reports Shadaloo collected on Ryu, and Kazuya could even boast about taking Ryu to the very limit. Moshe was no Ryu, but he'd be willing to go into the emergency room if it meant giving Kazuya a reminder of what respect meant, even to underlings. His loyalties were to Bison, not Kazuya, and given Bison's twisted nature, he would be more in line to reward Moshe for dealing with Kazuya rather than punish him.

_Be better than that, _Moshe reminded himself as Kazuya continued to glare at him. _He is only trying to prod for weaknesses. Be better than that. You are a professional first._

It was here that Moshe noticed something jutting out from underneath the desk calendar that Kazuya was resting his shoulders upon. Pulling it out from underneath the calendar, Moshe looked at the picture and realized that it was of a woman: quite beautiful, with raven hair and smooth, pale skin. Given that she was not facing the camera, Moshe could easily deduce that she was not aware that there was a photo taken of her. "I recognize this woman," Moshe said out loud. "Why do you-"

"None of your concern," Kazuya hissed as he quickly snatched the picture from Moshe's hands and placed it in his jacket pocket. Kazuya seemed so collected and sure of himself, like a tiger about to pounce on its prey, but as soon as Moshe found that picture, the Shadaloo lieutenant noticed the shift in Kazuya's expression. He was on the defensive now, like an animal cornered by hunters. For a supposed devil made flesh, for a brief flash Kazuya seemed very much like a human.

Before either of them could say something else on the matter, Moshe's radio buzzed to life, calling the Shadaloo soldier to attention as he pulled it from his belt and spoke into it. "This is Lt. Sheffer. What is it?"

"There's an unknown civilian approaching the camp, standing at 50 yards outside the northern perimeter. Orders to engage?"

"She's here..."

With those quiet words, Kazuya stood up from his seat, staring out the window of his office where the northern perimeter was in plain sight. Again, Moshe took note of the expression of concern on Kazuya's face, giving him yet another reason to believe that maybe he was wrong about Kazuya. "Wait until I get there before acting. I will personally give the order to the troops once I arrive. I will be over there shortly."

* * *

Arriving by jeep, Moshe opened the door for Kazuya to step out and with his gaze never deviating from the northern perimeter. Whatever was standing outside the barricade had Cold-blooded Prince spooked, though Moshe said nothing about it ever since he snatched the picture from his hands. Instead, the two of them stepped to the front line where a good thirty men had their guns pointed directly at the figure, with the cold winds of the South Pole blowing around snow to obscure their vision.

After being handed a pair of binoculars, Moshe took a good look at the stranger, and immediately recognized the character from Shadaloo's secret files that only those with a Level 5 clearance could view. A long brown trenchcoat obscuring any gender-obvious features, with a non-descript white collar shirt, red tie, and brown pants being slightly revealed underneath the coat. The face was covered with a metallic silver mask with yellow eyes, and a brown fedora covering the head. "...Q," Moshe said softly.

Of all of the fighters Shadaloo kept tabs on, the one known only as 'Q' was the one who Shadaloo knew the least about. Q would randomly appear at different points across the world, linked to seemingly unrelated disasters and attacks with the exception of Q's involvement. Due to the nature of Q's attire and how the only visual accounts of Q's appearances were in blurred pictures, Q's gender was unknown. Regardless, Shadaloo had marked Q as extremely dangerous, and now Q had shown up on Shadaloo's doorstep.

"Open fire."

Quickly turning his head at Kazuya, Moshe's eyes widened as he heard the sounds of guns cocking while Kazuya repeated the order again. "Open fire!"

"What? No!"

Moshe tried to protest, but it was already too late. The sound of gunfire filled the air as Moshe watched in horror as a spray of bullets ripped through the stranger. Almost immediately, Moshe realized how this was going to do much more harm than good. For starters, the Shadaloo file demanded that Q be brought to headquarters alive, as Q possessed vital information on several incidents that were of great interest to Shadaloo. Secondly, the eye-witness accounts of Q described the stranger as being able to withstand much worse than a battalion's opening salvo. If this didn't kill Q, then the consequences would be very severe indeed.

"Cease fire! Cease fire!"

Pulling out the megaphone from the jeep, Moshe belted out his orders to cease fire. Once the gunfire had ceased, Moshe momentarily lost his temper and grabbed Kazuya by the collar. Kazuya could probably annihilate him if even half the stories about him were true, even with Moshe's obvious height advantage, but Moshe put that on the back of his mind. "What were you thinking? Q is a Level 5 clearance suspect, which means that we're to bring him in alive unless Bison himself gives the order. You are Shadaloo's guest: don't give out orders that you can't-"

"You fool," Kazuya said with a grin as his eyes shifted back towards the figure in the distance. Following Kazuya's gaze, Moshe's eyes widened in shock as the figure returned to an upright position as if nothing happened at all. There was no way that all thirty of the gunmen could miss someone standing still, and there were tears in the cloth of the coat where the bullets tore through the individual. "I gave the order to open fire: I never said anything about killing her," Kazuya explained as Moshe let go of him and put the binoculars to his face again.

There were definite marks on the coat to where the bullets made contact, as well as several of blood stains to confirm the damage done. Despite that, Q stood as comfortably as if nothing had happened at all. And there was something else about Q that gave Moshe reason to be concerned: the yellow eyes of the mask were now shining with an eerie glow, as if the bullets had set off some kind of trigger in the stranger. Something very bad was going to happen unless they neutralized Q immediately.

Moshe reached for the flash grenade attached to his hip, but just as he was about to yank it free, the sound of screams ripped through the air as the ground erupted in a spring of dark purple stalagmites. Though he and Kazuya were able to dodge in time, the soldiers on the front line were less fortunate. The stalagmites ripped through the soldiers like chainsaws, impaling them on sharp points if it didn't slice them apart with the sheer force they erupted from the ground. In less than a minute, the situation with the stranger had gone from an unknown civilian approaching to a definite red alert...all because Kazuya gave that order.

The situation was exacerbated further when Kazuya took the megaphone from Moshe's hand and shouted after the stranger as Q slowly walked towards the base, leaking some sort of dark purple substance that reeked of blood, poison, and malice where it could be whiffed even from the distance they stood. "Rampage to your heart's content! It will do you little good in the end," Kazuya shouted as he grabbed Moshe by the back of his uniform and pulled him away. "Seek me out if you have the courage!"

Before Moshe could say anything, Kazuya spun him around and grabbed onto his shoulders, glaring at him with his red eye burning with violent intent: the very same wave of murderous aura that caused Moshe to hesitate when he first entered Kazuya's office. "I don't care how many men it takes, and I don't care how many munitions you have to empty: make sure that meddlesome woman does not reach me. If there is even one survivor left and she is facing me, then I will personally execute them for cowardice. Put that on your conscience!"

"You...," Moshe growled as he reached for his pistol once more, but a wave of fear washed over him as he looked deeper into Kazuya's eye. Whatever flash of humanity Kazuya was showing when he hid away that photograph was gone now, and in its place was the brutal killer that Shadaloo was hoping they would get when they shook hands with the leader of G-Corporation. That red eye was a symbol of unspeakable evil, and it was now the dominating force that drove Kazuya. "...yes, sir," Moshe said reluctantly as Kazuya walked away with the tails of his coat blowing behind him.

Once a sufficient number of troops arrived on the scene, Moshe watched the stalagmites descend back into the ground, leaving its victims to gently bleed out and stain the snow red. Q stepped over the corpses and crossed over the barricade that she decimated with ease. Moshe found it curious that Kazuya kept referring to Q as a woman when her gender was still an unknown, and he would be sure to tell Bison of this when he returned to base. For now, though, he had his orders: Kazuya was Shadaloo's guest and he had a duty to protect him from harm.

The first few soldiers rushed past Moshe to attack, no doubt having similar orders echoed to them. The soldier that reached Q first was quickly subdued with a crushing front kick to his stomach, with blood shooting out of his mouth as his ribs were reduced to rubble in an instant. Moshe rushed over to the fallen soldier as two more rose up to attack, but after a couple of seconds realized that it was already too late to help him. The next two soldiers met a similar fate, with their jaws broken by a spinning high kick that followed a clipping kick to the shin.

Three more soldiers came rushing towards Q, this time armed with riot shields. Sadly, it would do them little good as Q reached out for one of the shields and broke through it with her hand as easily as plastic wrap, latching onto the Shadaloo soldier's head. The other two soldiers attempted to rescue their comrades, but Q merely snapped her gloved fingers and another dark purple stalagmite erupted from the ground, impaling one of them and shredding through the face of the other.

A painful but quick death: the soldier still in her grasp would not be so lucky. With that mysterious purple ooze pooling beneath them, Q watched the soldier convulse violently in her grasp with her yellow eyes still glowing softly. As he convulsed, Moshe noticed his body withering rapidly, and the smell of decay was almost enough to make him puke. Rearing back her free hand, Q sent the corpse spiraling away like a rag doll with a thrust of her palm. Moshe had heard the attack, known only as "Capture & Deadly Blow," but he had no idea that the true version was so horrific. The victim looked more like a crash dummy than a human being now that it had been sapped of his vitality.

The sound of gunfire once filled the air as a bullet narrowly whizzed by Q's head, avoided only by her gently moving her neck to the side. Turning to where the bullet was fired, Q dashed towards the gunman with inhuman speed before spinning around and driving her elbow into the soldier's nose. A spray of blood flew from the soldier as he flew backwards and crashed into the wall of one of the huts of the base, leaving an indent in its metal structure before falling to the ground. Two other gunmen fired from a distance, but again their bullets were of no use as Q dashed towards them and spun around with a wide-arching sweep that swept them off their feet. Though the sweep did considerably less damage than the elbow, Q showed no less mercy as she lifted her arms and summoned another stalagmite to make it no less fatal for them.

"Dashing Head Attack, Dashing Leg Attack," Moshe identified the techniques according to the description in Shadaloo's file, but the stalagmites and poison secretions were completely new to any kind of record of Q's appearances. The nature of Q's attacks were often clandestine, and if not for the photographs accumulated of related incidents, there were be no confirmation of Q's existence at all. Perhaps Moshe was realizing why Q was such an unknown, after watching the corpses sink into the purple muck that Q left in her wake, with the substance sinking into the ground without a trace. What a horrible fate: to be killed in such a horrible way, with no trace left of your corpse so no one would know how you died.

Like moths to a flame, several more soldiers came rushing after Q, and Q dealt with them accordingly with a rapid series of hand and leg strikes. Something else that bothered Moshe about this interloper was that her fighting style was nothing like the eye-witness accounts of Q's previous appearances. The Q that the Shadaloo file described moved very slow and methodically, using an unwieldly fighting style made effective only by the mysterious power that allowed Q to evade capture for so long. This Q used a very graceful fighting style, and Moshe couldn't shake the feeling that he had seen the fighting style before, in some previous report or video that Shadaloo required someone of his rank to watch.

Within seconds, a pile of broken bodies formed around Q, and Q lifted her hands once more so that she could claim the bodies of her attackers. Deciding that he had enough, Moshe pulled out the flash grenade from his belt and removed the lynchpin. Q had to be stopped, or else many more lives would be claimed. Moshe still had plenty of things he needed to accomplish before he died and he wasn't going to let this stranger take those ambitions from him.

Tossing the grenade directly at Q, Moshe hopped behind a box of guns and waited for the inevitable explosion that would stun his target long enough to swoop in and pin her to the ground. He waited...and waited...and waited until he opened his eyes and wondered why nothing was happening. _Dammit...she must have absorbed the grenade in that substance before it could detonate, _Moshe thought as he pulled his primary weapon from his belt: a crackling rod of purple electricity. He would need to get up close if he wanted to-

*thop*

Hearing something fall next to him, Moshe looked to his left and broke a cold sweat as he recognized the grenade that he thought he had gotten rid of. Instead, it was beeping rapidly with him only inches away from it! Quickly scrambling to his feet, Moshe turned to run away, but it was already too late for an evasive retreat. The grenade exploded in a deafening flash of sound and light, sending Moshe careening away and landing face first into the snow. He tried to scream, but it was drowned out by the cornucopia of noise and disruption, pushing all of his mortal senses past their limit and sending his mind into a tailspin.

Colorful lights flashed through Moshe's brain as he struggled to come to a conclusion about what just happened. Rolling over onto his back, Moshe felt something copper-tasting bubble up in his throat and he wondered if he was dying, but he could still move his body around so there wasn't any serious injury...at least not physical. Mentally, all he could do was turn his head to the side and watch through sparkling trauma as Q decimated his comrades.

Or at least, his temporary comrades, as the uniforms of Q's attackers had changed from Shadaloo operatives to the G-Corporation soldiers that Kazuya brought with him as escorts. Rather than use conventional guns and knives, these soldiers were armed with some sort of strange battle suit that covered their body like football gear, with glowing tubes of energy attached to their arms and necks. Unlike Shadaloo, G-Corporation came prepared for Q...which just added more questions as to how someone like Kazuya, a complete stranger to Shadaloo's world, seemed so intimate with the individual that had confounded the street fighting world for so long.

The soldiers said something to Q, but Moshe couldn't understand it in the daze that had clouded his mind, and then attacked en masse. Q effortlessly caught the first soldier's punch, and then gave the arm a twist before kicking the soldier in the shin and neutralizing him with an impossibly swift chop to the head which imploded his helmet like an egg shell. The second soldier was subdued in a similar manner, with his kick being caught instead of a punch. That left the next two soldiers who turned a dial on their suits and then let technology do the rest.

The armor on the suit seemed to build upon itself, growing further and further into the soldier's heads were nothing more than puny pimples on top of two mountains of metal and power, standing at least twice the height of Q. As the two armored soldiers lifted their gargantuan fists, Moshe noted through the pain that they were forgetting something very, very important: by adding so much mass to their bodies, they were now nothing more than giant punching bags for Q to toy around with. That's why Moshe was always so careful with how much muscle he put on his tall frame and why he had spent the past couple of months working on building lean muscle: height advantages were only important if you had the speed to match your range.

Easily flipping away from the two monstrous arms crashing into the snow, Q lifted her hands glowing with blue energy and pressed them against the arms, pushing through them as if they were made of bread and dough instead of metal and wires. As the two soldiers roared in pain and fell over, they quickly used the stubs of their arms to press the buttons on their suits that allowed them to return to their normal size...but all they were doing was lowering the defense they would have needed for Q's next attack.

With nothing more than a nod of her head, the miasma that had formed underneath's Q's battleground erupted in a massive fist of poisonous sludge that launched both soldiers high into the air...where a pit of stalagmites awaited them. As Moshe's senses returned, he almost gagged at the overwhelming stench of fresh blood that had populated the battlefield. More and more soldiers converged Q's position, both Shadaloo and G-Corporation, and Q continued to mow through them as if they were nothing more than children. _No...at least mercy would be shown to children, _Moshe thought bitterly as he continued lying on the ground, hoping that Q would just ignore him if he lay still. _It's lambs being led to slaughter._

Feeling his world spin around him, Moshe fought the urge to vomit once more as he turned his head away from the horrors that Q wrought on those foolish enough to stand in her way. He could hear the sound of bones breaking, blows landing, and screams of unbearable pain being cut short by death. As a former mercenary coming from the war-torn nation of Israel, Moshe was no stranger to these kind of horrors, but never had he seen a single individual deliver such devastation with nothing but her fists. There were many fighters that Shadaloo courted who sought this kind of power, and many in the organization theorized that if Bison himself were forced into a situation where he would need to step into the battlefield, he could deliver this level of carnage.

But what was the most traumatizing part of it all was that, even if Moshe lived to tell the tale, there would be no evidence of what happened here. The corpses sank into the ooze that Q secreted around her, and even when the ooze sank back into the ground, there was nary a blood stain left. As far as anyone else was concerned, what Moshe was experiencing was a terrible nightmare, one that only existed in his imagination. There would be nothing left when this was over...and unless something happened, neither would Moshe.

What seemed like hours were only minutes, and then the battlefield fell silent once more with the exception of Q's footsteps marching through the snow while the battlefield "cleaned" itself of evidence. Moshe held his breath as he realized the footsteps were coming closer, and muttered a quick prayer of forgiveness to God before turning his head to the side to accept his fate...only for a photograph to brush against his face. Pulling the photo from his face, Moshe pulled it away to get a better look at it...and again recognized the same woman that Kazuya tried to hide from him before. This time, she was holding a toddler with dark hair...

...and upon recognizing the child, Moshe realized the importance of the woman. In fact, it explained quite a bit about why Q had come to this area, and who Q truly was behind the mask.

The shadow of Q loomed over Moshe as he lowered the picture to look at the glowing eyes of Q, her deep breaths echoing through her mask. Containing his fear, Moshe noticed that there was a crack in the right eye of the mask, revealing glowing yellow irises and confirming to the Shadaloo lieutenant that there was a living creature beneath the mask. Hesitant to call someone with such uncanny power "human," Moshe watched Q reach out for his head, held his breath...and exhaled when Q instead took the picture from him. Placing the picture in a pocket outside of her coat, Q slowly walked past Moshe and continued her march towards her target.

* * *

"She's coming," Kazuya grumbled as he watched his underlings drag the massive box into view.

Even though the official reason Kazuya gave Bison for wanting to come back to the South Pole was so he could obtain the cargo that was now being put in plain sight, the real reason he came was because he thought he could escape from his pursuer. Being chased was something that Kazuya was not familiar with, as he fancied himself a predator with no one higher than him on the food chain. Although there were those in the tournaments who would occasionally make him sweat, and there were fighters in this new world who could match the power of the Devil Gene, Kazuya was never at so much of a disadvantage where he couldn't defend himself.

That was before this woman revealed her continued existence to him after news broke out that Jin Kazama had been slain.

Though Kazuya had sent many operatives to deal with this threat, she had destroyed any kind of opposition with minimal effort, and when Kazuya went to deal with the matter personally, he just barely escaped with his life. She would not stop, she would not tire, she would not relent, until she had taken her revenge. As an expert on the matter, Kazuya respected the power of a vendetta and how it could drive a person to do things that they would otherwise be incapable of doing...such as decimating a battalion from two different factions.

Tossing aside the last of the guards assigned to Kazuya, Q stood several paces away from her quarry as the Cold-Blooded Prince allowed himself a smirk, not so much out of arrogance as it was out of amusement that she had allowed herself to massacre so many of his men. "Using an urban legend to mask your identity so that no one else can be aware of your vendetta," Kazuya shouted through the buffering winds before walking over to the massive box and wrapping his hands around the door. Using all of his strength, Kazuya ripped the box apart with his red eye flashing fiercely with demonic power, and let out a laugh as the cargo within the box finished the work for him by shredding through the steel and revealing itself to the world. "HAHAHAHA! That's the spirit! Let your rage boil over, until you dissolve everything that made you my weakness!"

Although Shadaloo was the organization that claimed power in organized crime and terrorism, there were other organizations that came close to toppling Shadaloo as the world's leading supplier in weapons and drugs...and Shadaloo's gift to Kazuya's G-Corporation would be the crowning achievement of one such organization's efforts before they were shut down. With its massive body darkened by an ultraviolet hue and its demonic eyes glowing red, Kazuya looked at the creature once more and marveled at it. The monster stood at over ten feet tall resembling and cruel parody of a humanoid, with a massive oversized claw in one arm and a thickly muscled fist in the other. Its human-like feet seemed to melt the snow around it with its murderous aura, and its crooked teeth ground together with madness as its massive heart beat rapidly on its shoulder.

"Tyrant Type-Pandora: It's the thirty pieces of silver Bison gave me for taking Jin," Kazuya gloated as the monster rushed towards Q with deceptive quickness, swatting Q away with a swipe of its claw and sending her rolling backwards through the snow. "What he didn't know was that I would have happily worked for free to bring that sniveling puke to his knees...but why waste a good business opportunity?" Watching Q slowly return to her feet with a large gash in her coat, revealing the unmistakable red stain of blood, Kazuya's smirk widened into a maddened smile as he watched his Tyrant close in for the kill. "Does this thing anger you? Doesn't it make you want to rip it to shreds, knowing that this was the price I paid for our-"

Kazuya's voice was drowned out as large purple hands erupted from the ground to grab onto the Tyrant's arms, hardening to form shackles that even the mighty Tyrant could not break. Thrashing about madly, the Tyrant did not notice Q methodically walking towards it, moaning as the purple substance that had taken so many lives threatened to burst out of her body so that it could harvest victims faster. With her eyes flashing with power, Q gently placed her gloved hand on the Tyrant's body...

...and an instant later, they were both enveloped in a detonation of violet sludge, forcing Kazuya to jump backwards lest he be dissolved by its acidic properties. Narrowly avoiding the lethal glop, Kazuya scoffed as he looked up to see the mountain of sludge slowly fall back down into the ground...only to reveal that Q was now alone. No...that wasn't right. Once the sludge had reached ground level, he noticed a massive skull tainted purple floating out of the substance before descending into the ground along with it. Even with all of the praise Bison had given the Tyrant Type Pandora, in the end it was nothing but another harvest for this woman's vendetta.

It was here that Kazuya realized that he was now alone with Q. Anyone who could possibly help him was now either dead or long since gone. "Tch," Kazuya grunted as Q slowly marched towards Kazuya with only the sound of her steady, even breaths being heard through her feet trudging through the snow. Q had literally come to the ends of the earth for him, to judge him for the most terrible of crimes of murdering his own son in cold blood. There was no way out for him...and as this realization came to him, Kazuya allowed himself a smirk.

The wave of miasma made its way towards him like a tide, and Kazuya could only fold his arms as he prepared for the woman to take her revenge on him.

"Sir!"

With both Q and Kazuya turning to the voice of what had to have been the last survivor on the battlefield, Moshe quickly ran up to the interloper and placed his headset radio to her ear. "Before you do something that you will most certainly regret...please listen to what is happening in our prison camp in Burma," Moshe said with tired breaths. Turning towards Kazuya, Moshe addressed him, as well. "Sir, I am happy to inform you that your son is still alive...maybe now it's not too late to reconcile with him like you were thinking about doing."

"Impossible," Kazuya growled. "Bison assured me that-...GRR!" Quickly reaching for his cell phone in his pocket, Kazuya rapidly dialed the number he wanted to reach and angrily put the receiver to his head. Once someone picked up, Kazuya snarled out his frustrations. "IMBECILES! You assured me that this would just be a secret between me and Bison! What is going on there!?"

_"I-it's that girl with the pigtails! She must have put some kind of tracking device on him when we took his body. She came in here with a Pandora fragment and...oh, God. She's here! Markel, Kageyama, secure the-...AAAAAAGH!"_

Kazuya growled once again as the sound of gunfire echoed through the receiver. Even without mentioning any names, he knew exactly what was being talked about in regards to a girl with pigtails. Another reason why his son Jin was such a hypocrite: even as the leader of the Mishima Zaibatsu and the so-called enemy of the free world, he allowed weaknesses and loose ends such as friendship and nostalgia to run amok. Weaknesses were to be conquered, not nurished. Unfortunately for Kazuya, it seemed like that "weakness" of Jin's was now the monkey wrench ruining his machinations.

"...I'm coming for you, father."

*click*

"Delightful," Kazuya grumbled as he put his phone away and turned back to the matter at hand. Disappointingly, the goo that was going to consume him retracted back into Q's trenchcoat, having listened to what was going on from Moshe's radio. With her eyes losing their yellow glow, Q placed her hands in her pockets and steadied her breathing. "...it doesn't change the fact that I tried to sell his body to Bison," Kazuya added in his "defense." "Are you going to forgive me because I didn't confirm his death?"

"..."

"...look at what you did to try and find me," Kazuya lifted his arm and waved it around to show how the once-thriving base was now as lifeless as the cold wasteland it was situated in. "All of that talk about peace...all of that talk about uniting my family under a single banner...all of that talk about our love conquering our feud...all of it, thrown out because I took something for you and you believed that you would never be able to get it back."

"That's not true," Moshe added as he put the radio away and instead pulled out a pistol, pointing it towards Q's head. "You still keep a picture of her on your person at all times. You knew she was coming for you...but once you were cornered, you were prepared to resign to your fate. You owed it to her to allow her to punish you...because you knew that you deserved it."

"...why are you pointing that gun at her?" Kazuya finally asked.

"...Q is wanted for questioning by Shadaloo," Moshe said quietly. "I was assigned to protect you, and I have: take the helicopter located in Hangar 18 and I will bring Q back to headquarters myself."

"...so be it," Kazuya growled before turning around to walk away.

"...YoU'vE aGeD, KaZuYa..."

Though distorted by the mask, both Moshe and Kazuya could make out what Q said: the first time the interloper had spoke since the incident began. Kazuya paused and turned his head slightly, eyeing Q with his red eye glowing softly, before turning around and giving his own parting words. "You, as well...Kazama Jun..."

Once Kazuya had faded into the veil of wind-swept snow, it was now between Moshe and Q. "...the storm is intensifying," Moshe said as he put the gun back in its holster. "It would be...unfortunate if I lost you with all of this snow blowing around obscuring my vision."

Q slowly turned her head to face Moshe, and the lieutenant held his breath as visions of his wife and infant son flashed through his mind while he waited for Q to slay him like she had slain so many others...but the crack in her mask revealed a very human eye filled with a sense of relief...a sense of relief that a parent like him could relate to. With a tilt of her hat, Q slowly backed away and became lost in the white mist blowing around them.

A long time passed before Moshe finally looked around to sink in what he had just witnessed. With no bodies to collect and Kazuya too prideful to admit that he almost allowed himself to be claimed by that woman who bore him the son that he was supposed to have murdered alongside Bison, the story Moshe would give would likely be explained away as a hallucination brought about by the extreme cold of the storm. His comrades in Shadaloo would think no less of him, apart from some questioning of his fortitude to come up with such a terrible story to explain why he fell ill during an important mission.

But no matter what excuse Shadaloo would give him to conceal the truth, Moshe would never, ever forget how the myth of Q, just for one day, turned into a horror story.


End file.
